From the Freedom From Religion Foundation: Colorado school district censors FFRF pamphlets

On Friday, April 1, Delta County School District employees are scheduled to place Freedom From Religion Foundation literature, along with material from the Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers and The Satanic Temple, in schools for students to take. The School District has complained about two FFRF pamphlets: “An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible” and “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” Both of them are being limited to just the local high schools.

The School District objects to the cartoon cover of “An X-Rated Book,” which shows a bible groping a young woman.

“It is inappropriate in a school setting; we would not allow

Shaista Gohir wonders why Muslims are policing other Muslims in a way that used not to be the case.

Muslims who express views regarded as too moderate and therefore against their narrative (and according to them against Islam), are often bullied and smeared including incitement of hatred. Many Muslims have been subjected to such aggressive behaviour regularly through social media. The Online trolls who go after Muslim men and women in this manner are often connected to each other and sometimes operate in packs. Muslims like myself are also regularly referred to in derogatory terms such as ‘House Muslims,’ (derived from the term House Negro)‘Uncle Toms,’ and ‘Sell Outs.’ It is used to dehumanise any Muslim who disagrees

This piece in Esquire is drawing a lot of hilarity on Twitter. It’s a helpful article explaining what “non-binary gender” is for people who have been living in a locked trunk for the past few years. It’s by Sam Escobar, who is non-binary themself (they use “they/them” for their pronouns).

So non-binary.

They (Sam Escobar) start by explaining that people ask them (Sam Escobar) a lot of silly questions once they (Sam Escobar) tell them (the people) they (Sam Escobar) are non-binary. They (the people) even ask them (Sam Escobar) about their (Sam Escobar’s) crotch.

Yes, even in New York. Yes, even among seemingly “progressive” people. And it stems from the fact that most people you meet simply do not 

Howard Levitt, an expert in employment law, says Jian Ghomeshi won’t be working in broadcasting again.

Before his fall, Jian Ghomeshi was a model for cool, liberated, feminist men. That image was left in tatters when he was fired from the CBC and the resulting stories quickly reached public attention.

The question now being roundly asked is whether he will be able to return to the CBC after last week’s acquittal? The simple answer is no. In my crisis management work, I look at the prospect of rehabilitation from the perspective of the client’s perceived image before the infraction.

A public figure or executive can be rehabilitated only if the person’s “infraction” is not inconsistent with their public image.

An incident in India, via the Times of India:

BHOPAL: In a case of extreme brutality, a Jabalpur youth was allegedly tied to the window grille of a Mumbai-bound train and thrashed by three youths for drinking water from their bottle.

A video of the incident that took place on the Patliputra-Lokmanya Tilak Terminal (12142) train on March 25 went viral on Tuesday. Police ordered a probe into the matter after studying the footage.

Sumit Kachi, who was travelling to Mumbai, boarded the train in Jabalpur on March 24. While on the train, he drank water from a bottle belonging to co-travellers Vicky, Ravi and Balram, all from Patna.

The trio allegedly tied him to window grille of the

Peggy Orenstein was on Fresh Air yesterday; it was a great conversation.

Author Peggy Orenstein says that when it comes to sexuality, girls today are receiving mixed messages. Girls hear that “they’re supposed to be sexy, they’re supposed to perform sexually for boys,” Orenstein tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, “but that their sexual pleasure is unspoken.”

While researching her new book, Girls & Sex, Orenstein spoke with more than 70 young women between the ages of 15 and 20 about their attitudes and early experiences with the full range of physical intimacy.

She says that pop culture and pornography sexualize young women by creating undue pressure to look and act sexy. These pressures affect both the sexual expectations that

What was that about Trump’s hatred of women?

The NY Times has more:

Donald J. Trump, pressed Wednesday on his support for a ban on abortion and what it would mean in practice, said that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.

Those whores. No punishment for men, of course, who have absolutely nothing to do with it.

He took it back hours later after everyone yelled at him.

Mr. Trump made the comments in a town-hall-style forum with the MSNBC host Chris Matthews that was prerecorded for broadcast Wednesday night. Mr. Matthews pressed Mr. Trump on his support for criminalizing abortion, asking him how he would enforce such a

Trafficking right here in the USofA, land of the free – the BBC runs the story of Shandra Woworuntu, who thought she was signing up for a job in a hotel in the US.

She had a job in a bank but then the Asian financial crisis hit and she lost her job.

So to support my three-year-old daughter I started to look for work overseas. That was when I saw an ad in a newspaper for work in the hospitality industry in big hotels in the US, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. I picked the US, and applied.

The requirement was that I could speak a little English and pay a fee of 30m Indonesian rupiahs (in 2001,

The petition to Rabble to fire Meghan Murphy (the content of which is Sheila Sampath’s ignorant and dishonest post) shows this as the first comment, signed by Sarah Hunt:

Feminism has a long history of racist, classist, colonial wrongdoings that have, in recent years, been recognized as exclusionary and oppressive. Racism, transphobia and anti-sex work rhetoric have no place in a supposedly forward-thinking feminist organization. I am appalled by the kinds of violent attacks that MM has initiated against sex workers, trans women and women of color through her columns and on social media. I stand in solidarity with the grassroots individuals and groups who initiated this campaign to end Rabble’s complicity in MM’s hateful actions.

Emphasis mine. … Read the rest

Following links from one article to another article I followed yet another and found myself reading a horrifically mindless and dishonest open letter to a website “demanding” that it ditch Meghan Murphy. It’s dated May 1 2015 and it’s written by one Sheila Sampath, whose vocabulary is almost entirely made up of jargon plus lies. I think I remember some mumblings about it last year, but I don’t think I investigated further. It’s a sterling sample of the worst kind of self-consciously (and self-admiringly) “intersectional” politics de nos jours.

Editor’s note: below is an open letter to rabble.ca. To sign the change.org petition, demanding they end their association with Meghan Murphy as editor and columnist, click here.

Open

Rebecca Mott on the tip of an iceberg:

To speak top being prostituted is to enter the heart of hell, but constantly being told it not as bad as you say.

But I know and remember the cold dead eyes of punters and sex trade profiteers – I know with every cell of my body that all violence done to the prostituted is pre-planned and done with a sense of entitlement.

There is and has never been accidental violence done to the prostituted – and the vast majority of this violence is done by men who are very ordinary, often non-violent outside of prostitution, and will be outwardly classed as good men.

But put a punter in a room,

From the Advocate:

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards will soon rescind an antigay executive order issued by his predecessor, Bobby Jindal, Deadline Hollywood reports.

“As far as Jindal’s religious liberty order, the governor intends to rescind it in the near future,” Edwards’s press secretary, Shauna Sanford, said in response to a Deadline inquiry today in the wake of Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s veto of a so-called religious liberty bill that would have allowed discrimination against LGBT people based on religious objections.

Good.

There should be a standard label for bills of that kind – a “God hates fags” bill perhaps.

Jindal, a Republican who once sought his party’s presidential nomination, last year issued the Marriage and Conscience Order, which

Originally a comment by tiggerthewing on A short distance from the children’s playground.

This is what religion does – fills someone with so much hate that they’ll kill themselves in dreadful ways in order to kill innocent people, just to deprive others of freedom or rights.

It is never the hierarchy that commit suicide, however.

Why can’t the fanatics see that? Why don’t they question? If it really is what god wants, why aren’t the clerics blowing themselves up? “Oh, I’m not worthy to kill myself – I’ll make the sacrifice to stay alive and maintain all this horrible, horrible Earthly power, and let you get all the posthumous glory!” Seriously? Does no one see that, if self-sacrifice … Read the rest

Editing to add: People tweeted at me to tell me Julian Vigo is a woman, so I’m correcting.

Julian Vigo’s piece on online horribleness is rather diffuse and overlong, but it makes good points.

She starts with Jesse Singal’s article in New York mag “How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired” and the Twitter abuse he got after it appeared.

And no matter where you stand on the subject of transgenderism and children — a very controversial subject to be certain — the conscious misrepresentations of Singal’s meticulously researched 11,000 word article are as denigrative as they are exploitative of a social media that allows for critique to pass through 140 characters.

You … Read the rest

No.

No no no no no.

SparkNotes, which is one of those embarrassing American things that help people pass English tests by translating literature into the vocabulary of Sports Illustrated – SparkNotes, I say, has translated Heart of Darkness that way, and they should be arrested. Perhaps flogged. I don’t approve of flogging, but I might have to make an exception.

Behold.

Conrad:

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

Sparky:

The Nellie, a … Read the rest

There was a peace vigil in Brussels yesterday. It was confronted by a gang of fascists shouting about immigrants. Deutsche Welle reports:

Riot police backed by water cannon vehicles were called to the Place de la Bourse-Beursplein in the center of the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Sunday to keep right-wing groups away from demonstrators wanting to show solidarity following the deadly attacks on Tuesday.

Black-clad protesters shouting slogans against immigrants and the jihadist “Islamic State” group faced off with police in front of the city’s stock exchange building, where a group of other demonstrators had gathered to mourn the victims of the attacks.

Complete with Nazi salutes:

The Independent says they singled out Muslim women for abuse:

Muslim women

Tehmina Kazi has a brilliant article on the murder of Asad Shah and what needs to happen about sectarian hate crime.

It is unbearable to think that someone who reached out to others, no matter what their background, has been extinguished by a mindset that was the antithesis of everything he stood for. Mr Shah was one of those newsagents who would go the extra mile for every customer. Not only did he remember everyone’s names, but he would send people Christmas cards or Eid cards, depending on their religion. He took an interest in people’s lives, be they young, old, black, brown or white.

Two vigils were organised for him — one with 500 people, including Nicola Sturgeon, in